What You Must Know About DRM

13 Conclusion The expansion of DRM technologies has significant implications for the privacy, fair use and free expression rights of consumers. Although many companies that use DRM technologies appear to be gambling that consumers will eventually accept some infringement of their rights in exchange for DRM-protected digital music or movies, there is no guarantee that this will happen. Instead, consumers may reach a breaking point and refuse to purchase such products if they feel that their rights are being increasingly violated. In this paper, we have focused on the privacy issues associated with DRM and argued that companies that use such technologies should consider simply not collecting personal information from consumers or seek their informed consent before collecting, using or disclosing any personal information. In addition, we have put forward seven steps for embedding privacy into DRM technologies, and proposed some simple privacy protection tips for consumers. Addressing privacy problems alone will not alleviate the host of problems connected to DRM. However, thinking about privacy issues may help the industry to assess whether its overall approach to protecting digital content is viable in the long term, or whether it should adopt a more balanced approach that also takes into account the rights of consumers.